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Tuesday, 6 November 2012

Guest Post: Bodies in Utopia, Bodies in Space

This blog deals primarily in speculations about the future
of sex, gender, and society. So does the new publication by The Future Fire,
the Outlaw Bodies anthology co-edited by Lori Selke.

The book focuses on characters who are yearning for
something more, some way out of the binary that is gender, the divide between
the flesh and the digital, the disparities and inequalities that result from
those dichotomies, and dares the reader to dream of different spaces, of Other
spaces.

This collection points to the body in a very specific way:
to ask about its limitations and push beyond them.

This collection is not about utopia, but it is about utopian
dreaming. It leads us to ask, what would a utopia of the body even look like? What
are the boundaries? Who stands on the outside?

In “Des espaces autres,” Michael Foucault speaks of the present (for Foucault, 1967) as an era
of change, an “epoch of simultaneity: we are in the epoch of juxtaposition, the
epoch of the near and far, of the side-by-side, of the dispersed. We are at a
moment.”

The tales in Body Outlaws peek into that “epoch,” that space
we’re still reaching for; contemporary body politics, perhaps more than at any
other time or place in history, is poised for change. The narrative of our
lives, of society, is told with many voices, and conflict, as in Foucault’s
observations, takes place between “the pious descendents of time and the
determined inhabitants of space.”

This conflict is not one that can be resolved by segregation
of space into separate spheres, mini-utopias, if you will, of male/female,
gay/straight, public/private. It’s a conflict that forces these spheres into
coherent relation, into dialogue. As Foucault reminds us, “we do not live
inside a void that could be colored with diverse shades of light, we live
inside a set of relations.”

As a member of the Outer Alliance, we advocate for queer speculative fiction and those who create, publish and support it, whatever their sexual orientation and gender identity. We make sure this is reflected in our actions and our work.